They're both perfectly valid English (though subject is far more common in this exact context), and obviously the meaning is essentially equivalent. Grammatically, a subject usually does something to an object, so by analogy Jim's wailing child can be an object just as much as a subject.
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FumbleFingersJul 12 '12 at 1:30

In OP's exact context (much scrutiny), it's not really possible to rationalise any difference in meaning. Both forms occur, but subject is about 8 times more common than object. I don't see either as more "correct" than the other.

In the closely-related of much debate, that preference equally strong (and has far more examples in Google Books). I suppose a punctilious person might argue that subject implies "topic", and object implies "purpose", but I think that's clutching at straws.

In short, the meaning nets down to the same thing regardless of which word you use - Jim's wailing child can be subjected to scrutiny, in which case he's the subject. Or he can be the object being scrutinised, if you want to look at it that way (and if you want to adopt a minority position).

The subject of the meeting is what you talk about in the meeting. The object of the meeting (perhaps a better word would be objective) is the expected result of the meeting (such as a marketing strategy, etc.)

Hi, welcome to English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Try to tailor your answer more to the question, while what you have written is correct and demonstrates a contextual difference, it doesn't really help answer the original query.
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SamAug 14 '14 at 21:39